‘As for singing on the book in many parts made impromptu, my sentiment is that it is almost impossible to do well… I maintain that it is...

‘What Must be Observed when Improvising a Third Part on Two Given Parts: Skilled contrapuntists occasionally want to improvise a third...

‘[Alemanno Benelli:] But because of the presumptuous audacity of performers who try to invent passaggi, I will not say sometimes, but...

‘To sing with fidelity... is to sing so that anyone of those singing together should remain in the form of those notes that were...

'As for singing upon a plainsong, it has been in times past in England, as every man knows, and is at this day in other places, the...

‘Singing on the book. A Plainchant or counterpoint in four parts, which the musicians compose and sing impromptu on a single [part]:...

‘Then out the People yawl an hundred Parts, Some roar, some whine, some creak like the Wheels of Carts; Such Notes the Gam-ut yet did...

Question. How can one remedy the fault that a choir, when it sings a well-known church chorale without sheet music, as must often happen,...

'Among the compositions made above a cantus firmus by the masters of the art, those [made] above introits are unique, and are used...

‘I have no doubt at all that the counterpoints above a cantus firmus from the introits by Constanzo Porta and Giovanni Matteo Asola,...

‘When I learned descant [1] from my master Bold he, seeing me so inclined and willing to learn, always had me in his company, and because...

‘I know of no musician today who has any idea what it means to sing on the book. It was an improvised and simultaneous melody [chant]...

The summary below is from Jean-Paul Montagnier, “Le Chant Sur Le Livre Au XVIIIe Siècle: Les Traités de Louis-Joseph Marchand et Henry...

‘... France, where musical taste has always been somewhat backwards, has never abandoned the mania for improvising on plainchant. The...

‘In Rome...while singing [extempore] counterpoint, in the mind (alla mente) above the bass, nobody does that which his partner sings, but...